Ex-Rockstar Games developer shuts down blog after huge Vice City zombie game leak

A former Rockstar Games developer has moved to shut down a blog that had revealed some insider information about game development at the company in the 2000's following feedback from Rockstar North via email.

Former Rockstar North technical developer Obbe Vermeij opened up in a blog about the development secrets behind Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas and GTA IV.

Vermeij, who worked for Rockstar between 1995 - 2009, revealed the development of a GTA 2.5 (to follow the 2D GTA 2) as well as a zombie survival-horror successor-of-sorts to GTA: Vice City, based off of the code of that game.

However, before the blog could continue, a post discussing the games was deleted yesterday after Vermeij was contacted by Rockstar:

"Today (22 Nov 2023) I got an email from R*North," wrote Vermeij.

Apparently some of the OG's there are upset by my blog. I genuinely didn't think anyone would mind me talking about 20 year old games but I was wrong. Something about ruining the Rockstar mystique or something.

Anyway,

This blog isn't important enough to me to p**s off my former colleagues in Edinburgh so I'm winding it down."

Vermeij added further clarity to the situation on X and stated that Rockstar North did not force him to close the blog down, just that it was disliked by former colleagues.

There is no telling as to what specifically Vermeij's former colleagues found umbrage with, but Vermeij discussed a lot about the development of early GTA games as well as the cancelled Agent PS3 exclusive and the aforementioned zombie project in a post entitled 'Distractions: Agent & Z.'

Rockstar Norther spent a while pogressing the idea of their zombie game - Z. The game, (pronounced zed), would've been built using code from Vice City, based on a push from artists at the company who were fascinated with zombies.

Z would've been sent on a Scottish Island with the player repelling constant attacks from the undead, using vehicles to explore.

Why didn't it go ahead? Well those working on Z - according to Vermeij - found the idea depressing and focused work on GTA: San Andreas instead.

Vermeij also talked about aspects behind the development of GTA 3 and Vice City, and touched on the potential of a GTA 3 LAN game to add multiplayer to the open-world map, an idea that would gestate until it was realised fully in GTA IV.

It's a shame that Vermeij has closed his blog posts on the GTA games, as it was genuinely interesting, and the posts that remain aren't as perhaps 'gossipy' in that they don't reveal unknown information, but they still touch on deeper aspects of game development at Rockstar.

For those who are interested, you can find it here.

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